To think the problem with wealth inequality is that rich people don't know how rich they are?

I think there’s a lot of truth of in that. Between us DH and I pull in low six figures, and are, by any standards, comfortable. We don’t struggle to pay our mortgage or bills. Our kids don’t go without. We can afford treats like the occasional meal out, day trip or take away. We have a holiday every year without going into debt. We have enough saving to ride out most emergency situations.

But we live in a small terrace in an expensive area, send our kids to state schools, and drive a 15 year old third hand car. All of our friends earn a lot more, mostly between them but in a couple of cases, due to one very high income. They have nice cars, huge houses, expensive holidays/hobbies (skiing, horse-riding, sailing) and their kids go to private schools. Compared to them, we definitely don’t feel rich.

But I grew up poor, and DH lower-income, and so we know how fortunate we are. We are constantly telling our kids - who thankfully have never known poverty - how fortunate we are, and that many/most people don’t have that simply luxury of not worrying about money.

This also shows its own lack of understanding though…

You assume the six figure salary earner is in a big house with an expensive leased car, and could save money by living more modestly, children sharing bedrooms…

… well, that modest two-up, two-down would be a £3k+ mortgage or rent payment here. Children sharing bedrooms very normal. People often don’t have a car at all and use public transport anyway as it’s more convenient.

I don’t think the six figure salary earner necessarily has the lifestyle you expect…!

I earn around 240k a year before tax. No mortgage. House worth about 500k maybe in the SE. I don't feel rich. I feel comfortable, that's all, but also know it could all easily go tits up quite quickly.

I am sure refugees risking their lives and their family lives to come here will agree on that one

When people say "rich" what they mean is "richER than them"
that never helps.

This

I dont think anyone depending on their high stress jobs is particularly rich. The rich are those where if they were no longer able to work from today, their life would be unaffected.

I dont begrudge those on the 6 figure salaries. I see my boss and the work, responsibilities and hours she puts in and however much she is on she would be worth every penny to the company. They could have a moment of madness and offer me that role for that salary and I would turn it down as wouldn't be suitable for the stress levels I can handle. The ones earning it day to day are not given it for an easy role that anyone could handle, they are making the sacrifice

Success is rarely earned
and even when it is , there will usually have been additional support - like how my parents prioritised my education and ensured I got to a suitable school for me even though that wasn’t easy

people who work their backs off are care workers , teachers , nurses , and they don’t get rich but at least they contribute greatly to our lives

Ya, they don't understand. I saw a post on Mumsnet recently about her son in law, I think it was, gifting her 1000 toilet rolls. She wasn't happy and didn't know what to do with them. I'm not criticising the poster but having been a single mum who struggled to make ends meet, the anxiety relief and comfort you feel when you have an excess of essentials like that is huge. You feel rich and more secure, breath a sigh of relief that you're ok now when you have these things. You breathe out

I think the problem is that everybody wants someone richer than them to pay the tax, hence the talk of the super rich and corporations.

It's all very well being a caring, sharing Labour voter on £50 plus grand .......until they take your money to fund the benefits spending that you say you agree with.

"Even those who have inherited money, their parents will have worked their backsides off."

How far back are you happy to go on this? There are aristocratic families in this country whose wealth accrued through land gifted to them a thousand years ago, when William the Conqueror arrived!

50 families in the UK own 50% of the wealth. That's not been earned by someone losing sleep over paying their employees, that's earned because money makes money, and because they have more than they could ever spend and therefore more than they need.

IMO, that wealth should be taxed, in the same way as it would be for a working person earning a salary. Why is work taxed but wealth, even at this obscene level, somehow ringfenced?

Similarly, I disagree that it is inevitably the case that the parents will have worked their backsides off. Aside from the huge levels of independent, hereditary wealth in this country touched on above, there are plenty of children who stand to inherit vast property portfolios bought by parents in the 90s/00s, whose only real 'hard work' was benefitting from rapid increases in property values and rental income. They bought at the right time and now their children will never need to worry about money, whilst other children will never afford a home of their own, however hard they work. I know someone who stands to inherit about 30 properties, and in the meantime is living off rental income from some of those properties that she didn't buy. As I understand it, she receives that income as dividends, so pays far less tax than she would as a salaried worker.

I think the tax system needs to be fixed to address these issues, so that people feel that working hard pays. That means a tax on assets or income deriving from assets in the same proportion as would be paid by a salaried worker. Otherwise the productivity crisis will intensify, as people simply disengage from a system they feel is rigged against them and in favour of the asset owners.

Earnings are irrelevant, if outgoings are the same.

If someone is paying a London mortgage, plus student loan, plus childcare for two children, that could easily be £6,000 a month before bills. Add in council tax, food and basics like uniform/school shoes and I can see how people don't feel well off.

I moved out of London as soon as I could, bought a doer-upper and had only one child, for all those reasons.

If I hadn’t seen such riches, I could live with being poor 🎤

Not helpful to the thread, I just needed to get this out of my head.

I've never complained about people earning £100k

@AllJoyAndNoFun What does 'the BOTTOM 50% of the UK population mean in this sentence? Does it mean 50% of the set of lowest earning, or does it mean (which I presume it does) 50% of the British population overall, but the poorest 50%? If so, it is still 50% of the total population and the same shocking statistic it appears to be.

Rich and high earning are entirely different things. You can be in the top 1% of earners with a salary of £160,000. But assuming a 4x income multiple that top 1% salary would not get a 100% mortgage on the average property price in London which sits around £660k.

There's a philosophical component here.
The thinking is not about wealth redistribution and the provision of 'more' by the state. Rather, it's the belief that the state should be 'small' and people should be left to support themselves. Unless they're really on their uppers and then the state should supply enough for that. But no more.

"super rich" and "wealth hoarding" is very very different to people earning £100k

You are unlikely to be rich in 100k salary especially if you live in se and have a child. In which case you’re probably struggling to pay mortgage and childcare!

typical socialist politics of envy - we should encourage and reward aspiration and entrepreneurial spirit unlike Labour who’s actively destroying it

I've seen similar posts but only in the context of blended families. So people basically saying if you can't afford to move to a 5 bed house then simply don't move in with the new BF/GF since it's not fair asking unrelated kids to share rooms. I agree with those posts actually. But obviously if you've got 3 related kids then it's perfectly fine for them to share.

But saying 'just cut down on your expenses and you'd be fine' is a slippery slope imo. You could say the same to people on a lower income. Just lower your heating by a couple of degrees, never eat out, cancel all your subscriptions etc. Sure, it would save money but in the end you'd be living a pretty joyless life.

It's very short sighted to tell anyone on £100k that they are rich, so shut up and pay up. The plan is drag ever more of us into that bracket. Careful what you wish for.

£100k is not rich, very comfortable, but unless you've been bringing that in for decades or have wealth and privilege from other sources you just aren't rich.

Higher earners spending less isn't good for anyone.

Forget the six figure workers, and look at their bosses boss. That's who you should be angry with.

I didn't ask about the public discourse disappearing and I know you know that. The entire concept of wealth inequality remains.

I also grew up in poverty, briefly in a well-off area where the council covered our rent, and pretending there wasn't a cumulative benefit of social and economic privilege among my neighbours wouldn't make that reality disappear.

I'm not personally doing the things you describe, but yes many people do do them in the pursuit of wealth. Some will succeed.

I agree with you that wealth isn't all about money, actually. I have what I need in life and am not chasing wealth myself. But I did feel the parallel you drew in your previous post between hard work and success/wealth needed challenging. Obviously it's true of some, but not all, wealthy and successful people. But hard work alone is no guarantee of success, and many very hard-working people are struggling to make ends meet at the moment.

This. Many posters on MN are keen to lump the £100k earners in with the likes of the Sunaks. Going on an annual ski holiday versus having enough money to never work a day again by living off of the interest are NOT THE SAME THING.

This is pretty much us, albeit on a bit less.
We have 2 10yr old cars, rarely go on holiday, our mortgage isn't outrageous. What do we spend our money on?
Kids - mostly grown. But we have uni expenses, which adds up and we help out with other stuff where we can. Insurance is a big one, yes we have private health insurance, critical illness, redundancy cover (which has saved our bacon more than once)...All that kind of thing.
We moved away from family for better salaries, relocated so many times, so we were late getting on the housing ladder. But now spend a fortune on travel to see those relatives who are now elderly.

We never have cash to spare. There's always a sudden bill, the boiler, one of the cars, uni rental deposit. My health is crap at the moment, so only one of us is working. Yet, we are on the magical £100k, so should be minted.

I'm very unsurprised by all the comments from people saying that they are on 6 figures and aren't rich. 😂

You're completely right. My parents are wealthy and have no idea whatsoever about what choices normal people are making day-to-day, and genuinely believe that they are struggling to survive.

My Mum sadly told me about how she's been waiting such a long time to get a new kitchen to replace her "tatty" old one, but my "tight-fisted" Dad is resistant to her spending £100k from their substantial investment accounts. The kitchen was last replaced about 10 years ago and still looks new. Not to mention the fact that most normal people wouldn't even consider £100k to be a reasonable budget for a kitchen.

My Mum and Dad are both coming from different angles. My Mum believes she and my Dad have "worked hard all their lives" (which they have, but don't we all!) and "deserve" to have everything all the time. It's important to her that people see how well she's done and having guests over to admire a brand new kitchen is a dopamine hit for her.

My Dad has a scarcity mindset. No matter how much money they are sitting on, he believes that it's going to run out. Even when they have been told by wealth advisors that they have more money than they can spend and are going to end subject to a lot of IHT and they should help out their kids now, his instinct is to hold onto all of it and only spend the minimum.

My Mum's insistence on spending increases his anxiety. His refusal to spend money feeds into her belief she's hard done by.

This is such a narrow, Disneyfied view of the wealthy. I come across it most from people who have grown a pretty modest amount of wealth from hard work and (quite understandably) get fed up of others thinking they got lucky when they know they made their own luck. But they are not the problem here.

'Lying awake worrying about how to pay the wages'. Yes I bet that is true of a number of small business owners who deserve better tax breaks and simplified employer regulations. But don't kid yourself and don't peddle this silly myth when it comes to challenging wealth distribution in relation to the superrich. Trump, Bezos, Jobs, Musk have never once lain awake worrying about anything that wasn't related to the inflation of their own egos.

You say inherited wealth comes from the hard work of the families who made it. But don't ignore the harder work of their workers, underpaid in lousy unsafe conditions. Why do you admire one and gloss over the other? Most superrich families achieved their wealth historically not just through hard work but through ruthlessness, lawlessness and brutality - stealing land, employing tiny children, creating factories so filthy and dangerous people choked to death and died young, working 12 hour shifts, and living in hovels while the aristocrats and industrialists built mansions for themselves.

It's still happening! Workers in Silicon Valley live in their cars! They can't afford flats. They have bought the myth of the dream. People in their twenties in the finance and fashion industries die of exhaustion, from drugs they take to keep them awake for the impossible hours they are expected to work. A woman really did give birth in a Sports Direct warehouse because she wasn't allowed time off. Sports Direct workers were checked before starting shifts, to ensure they were wearing unbranded clothing. That's one way of ensuring they know their place in the pecking order.

Trump didn't ever lie awake wondering how to pay people. He inherited a staggering amount of wealth and managed to be possibly the only person ever to lose money running a casino! He prides himself on not paying tradespeople because he has better lawyers if they try to sue. He is President of the USA - which should be the ultimate achievement and measure of success. But nothing - not one thing about that super-wealthy man is commendable. That we have become so dazzled by wealth intrinsically, not by what people do with their wealth, that we allow such an insane incompetent to rule the world should be a wake up call.

Bezos started out a really canny and imaginative entrepreneur. His desire for wealth made him inventive. And it succeeded. But why does it have to come with inhumanity? Why does it end with people working in the dark, giving birth in the toilet of an Amazon warehouse because they are not allowed a break. On zero hours contracts?

We have to start asking ourselves: why do we wealth and success are the same thing? Why do we aspire to wealth above other (imo) far more desirable measures of success.

You say 'Don't belittle success, be inspired by it.' I say: determine your own values of what 'success ' and what it should look like. Wealth - if you think this is a measure of what success is, okay. But also: Humane leadership - essential. Moral fibre - essential. Creation of a cohesive society - laudable. Desire to better the world for everyone, not just yourself - the ultimate measure of success, in my opinion. Amassing great wealth is not a measure of success in my book. How you amass it and what you do with it once it is amassed - how you distribute it, what you offer the world now you have that chance - that is inspirational. i'd never belittle that. But Musk becoming a trillionaire? I couldn't despise anyone or anything more. I am not jealous of his wealth. I am appalled at his tiny-minded, hoarding, self-centred paucity of imagination at what that money could do.

Sorry for the rant. @YorkshireGoldDrinker , you may not even have read it. But your values come over to me as those of someone who has worked hard and whose wealth or family wealth is the result of hard work, and who does have a sense of responsibility to employees. And people like you are really not the problem. I wish all employers had that ethic. But I do wish people who have created a modest amount of wealth for themselves didn't get defensive and put the blinkers on when it comes to discussing the sickness of superwealth hoarding at the expense of society. They are not the same thing.